Case for paid leaves for the quarantined

NEW DELHI: With the number of those infected by the novel coronavirus increasing in the country, it is likely that more people will be quarantined in the days to come. This is because it is not just the person who tests positive for the disease who needs to be isolated to prevent further transmission, but also those who come in close contact with the person.

To facilitate this, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday appealed to employers to give paid leave to quarantined people so that their livelihood was not affected.

Why is such an appeal necessary? Data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), conducted in 2017-18, showed that among salaried and casual wage workers, as many as 72% were not eligible for paid leave.

The survey did not ask the question to people who were selfemployed or those who were engaged in non-skilled agricultural jobs. These workers constitute 63% of all workers and their work doesn’t involve taking leave from an employer.

The headline figure of 72% hides the fact that there is a vast difference in paid leave eligibility among the casual wage workers and the salaried or regular wage earners.

Among casual wage workers, who form 39.5% of those to whom the question was asked, 98% were not eligible for paid leave.

This is to be expected because these workers are paid on daily or periodic work contracts. However, if such workers are quarantined for the prescribed twoweek period, they could lose 15 days’ wages.

The situation is not great even among the salaried or those receiving regular wages. Over half (54%) of such workers were not eligible for paid leave, according to the survey.

An occupation-wise breakup of the salaried, and those not eligible for paid leave, suggests that people who are less skilled don’t get paid leave even when getting regular wages. Eighty-three per cent of plant and machine operators and assemblers who the survey spoke to, for example, earned regular wages. Still, 77% of them did not get paid leave. An epidemic such as coronavirus, therefore, further highlights class differences between workers. A state-wise break-up shows that such interventions will be more important in poorer states. While only half of the workers in states such as Delhi and Maharashtra were not eligible for paid leaves, the share was over 80% in Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, according to the survey.